The UC Marketing Capstone Experience

Channel

July 17, 2017

I am not very nervous for this meeting. I just hope we are on the right track and get good feedback to keep improving our project. We still have a ton of work to do but I am feeling good that we will get everything done on time. It is really fun working on this project and everyday I work on it I seem to get a little bit more excited about the project. Today I just need to gather some more information and then pull stuff together for Drew's meeting. Then tomorrow just keeping pulling stuff together to get ready to show what I have been working on. Other than that we just need to keep making task for ourselves and finishing them through. That has been working really well for us lately. It's also great to hear that Braxton is supportive of our idea and I am trying to tie everything together that they asked for. I am glad I got this project because it turned out to be a lot of fun.

June 12, 2017

“Cincinnati is one big small town.” I have heard multiple people express this to me this week as I have been exploring (among other things) the way information travels in the Cincinnati area. Lucky for me, the city is full of special events, from festivals to small gatherings. And, I am grateful to be able to be on-site and conducting research locally, which allows me to gleam better understandings and deeper insights than what I would find online or over the phone.

This month is dedicated, in part, to building a thorough understanding of target consumers, their needs, desires, current awareness and perceptions, communication channels, and more. This week I have been event hopping and leveraging current connections to the community to build an understanding of awareness, complimentary services, venues, competition, etc., in the area. Lucky for me, this weekend was a large convention designed specifically for one of my client’s targets, and I was able to speak directly with vendors to build further understanding of the competitive landscape, how competitors position and promote themselves, and how people in the area gather and share information about their special events.

I also stopped by a community event at which a band which my client has identified as a main competitor was performing. Observing the competitor first hand allowed me to better understand what they offer, how it differs from what my client delivers, and reflect on the potential competitive advantage a deeper understanding of its audience can bring my client. I am excited to be starting to see the web of how the venues, events, and other sources of information work together. This week I look further to continuing to conduct in depth interviews with individuals and couples in the area to reach a thorough understanding of the target which can be aligned down the road with my client’s deliverables.

February 6, 2017

We have moved a step further in the research process. At this stage, we are confident about our big picture and the future goals. We had a meeting today with Professor Drew and he gave us a few insights that we did not earlier focus on. Now we have two different aspects of the same project. The meeting helped us understand the points that we did not consider in the previous phases. Now that we have a mixture of our understanding and Drew’s suggestions, my group and I are planning to work on it today.

We also discussed the persuasion class and I have a good feeling about it since one of our primary goals is to persuade the customers. On a side note, this class has taught me a lot about utilizing the time productively and making the most out of it!

January 29, 2017

This week, Team Behr worked on gaining some firsthand knowledge of our client's customers by doing some "secret shopping" at the client's store (The Home Depot) and a competitor's store. We also worked on pulling together some quotes so our contact, Lisa, can establish a budget.

As I wrote last week, we need to conduct market research on a very specific demographic group, and we've been asked not to use any Behr internal mailing lists. That means one of two things: trade organizations, or paying for responses. We have reached out to a trade group and may have some luck getting to survey their members, but otherwise, we're probably looking at several thousand dollars for a statistically significant survey.

Lisa has said she can give us a budget once we provide her with some pricing options, but I can't shake the feeling that she might not have bargained on a budget of thousands of dollars for "just a school project." This, of course, is nonsense of my own invention. There's no reason whatsoever that survey responses should be somehow less valuable when purchased by students, and Lisa certainly hasn't given us any indication that she thinks that's the case. And yet, I'm concerned that talk of a budget might put a strain on our cordial relationship.

It's always difficult to talk about money, isn't it?

But I suppose money is one of the unpleasant topics that a marketing manager must face in the real world. We provide a valuable service (that, if all goes well, will lead to the company making or saving millions of dollars), and we will require capital to do it. That's just how it goes, and so we might as well get used to having the discussion.

Still, I hope the trade organization comes through with their list. That'd be a win-win.

January 23, 2017

When I was told that I would work with Greater Cincinnati Water Works, I was excited but a little nervous to face the future challenge. As I went through the work done last year, the first image of GCWW came into my mind is a healthy water source, excellent service, and reliable protection. Yes, what they are selling is water officially, but what behind their product is more than I thought at the beginning. Their campaigns involve brand strategies, buyer behavior, and distribution channels. After going through the website and social media, my curiosity increases and my anxiety goes up as well.

Fortunately, Stephanni, who is marketing supervisor in GCWW now and was a student in UC, keeps in touch with us and arrange our initial meeting next Friday. The reason why we postponed our initial meeting is to meet all key members in our project to attain information as much as we can. Also, my team member and I agreed that meeting at GCWW and talking about our project face to face is the best way to help us get a good start. Before our initial meeting at GCWW, I will meet with my team member, Jay, tomorrow to discuss what we searched and questions. Now I understand the ambiguity that Drew mentioned in our first class after my reseaching. In our capstone project, we will face the either-or choice to go to next stage. Our world, the marketing world has not only black and white sections but also has a grey area waiting for us to explore.

It is good not only to know that I will not work alone with capstone but also have such great repeat client to cooperate. When I was asked about our marketing capstone by other people in Linder, I could feel their curiosity and admire, which made me proud of my major and gave me passion toward the future challenge. No matter what it will be, I should keep moving.

August 5, 2016

I got so busy with the project that I forgot to do this blog this week! We're definitely on the right track, in line with what our client is trying to do. We had a meeting on Wednesday with the web strategy department in revamping their website to be more user-friendly and to draw more traffic. They've already started some of our suggestions and are implementing others. It feels good to know that we are in alignment with their vision concerning web strategy. I have been storyboarding ads for static ads, some more creative ones and some more traditional but in line with the insights we've come across. I am also trying to organize some event marketing ideas. I still need to complete customer profiles. I think I'd only be able to do ones based on my own interviews because each case is so different, so how people proceed with treatment is so vastly different. I've been honing our communications as well to create more unified strategies based on the target audiences. It's fun and intense trying to do that.

July 6, 2015

This week, we concluded our market research and data collection. Since, we had already started the work on our report after completing every module, we ensured that we stay up-to-date every week.

Compared to the past weeks, this one was slow paced as we were working on our report, arranging and adding content. We also worked on the digital strategy for Evans. Although Evans has a good online presence and is quite active on social media platforms, we observed that their website needs fix-ups. Also, their social media communication needs to be more focused, based on the marketing strategy.

Hopefully, we have everything in place in the next few days, as we come closer towards the end of this project.

March 29, 2015

The weeks are counting down and it seems like I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel. However unlike the other teams or project is going until April 27th. This is at the request of our client and at first I thought this was a good thing. But now I’m ready to wrap things up. I want to finish out this semester strong, it’s just hard to keep going especially with other demands outside of class. I think that my team members are feeling the same, and I’m struggling to keep us motivated focused.

Even though the project is starting to wear on me, we made great progress this week. As a team we finished up a lot of the core items, in order to prep for our mid-point presentation to our client. Particularly we determined our main channeling strategy and developed a stronger name for the product. I think that the paths we have chosen will lead to a successful strategy. We also changed the format for our presentation. We found that the last presentation did not go as well as we planned in terms of comprehension. I believe this was due to the information dump we put in the slides. At the time it didn’t seem like this, but to someone outside of marketing it could be confusing. So we stuck to the big picture and took Drew’s advice on making the slides simpler and more concise. I have high hopes that this one will go better.

We only have three more modules to go: Price, Promotion (IMC-website mock-up), and the Market Opportunity. I know we can do it!

March 22, 2015

The past two weeks has been quite challenging. I found it very difficult to get motivated with all the obstacles life has been throwing my way. It has been a rough spring break to say the least. My team appears to not be doing well in the grandma department. The Thursday before spring break my grandma had a really bad fall, which caused her health to decline quickly. She passed away this last Friday. While I’m deeply saddened by all of this, I know that the show must go on! Thankfully I have a great team who supports me, and we have continued our progress on the project.

We have completed the STP modules of the Big Picture analysis and have begun on the 4Cs. It feels good to have completed all of this work, because our project has called for multiple STP models and approaches. As a team we have chosen to divide and conquer this information. I think it will be interesting to compile all our hard work and finish out strong with the 4Cs. We have already begun to generate a rough draft of the final document and an outline for the pitch deck that will be given to our client at the end of the project.

Over the past 2 weeks we have also been able to obtain a few more interviews. We interviewed an expert in the field, which helped us tremendously in our channel selection. He reinforced our thoughts about which channel to choose, and we plan to delve deeper this week. We also have an interview this coming weekend with a patient that is using a product more synonymous with the product we are trying to market. I’m excited to gain a new perspective and feel that this will build on our market research, allowing us to provide a stronger case for our proposed strategy.

My only hope is that we can continue to focus on completing the project and there are no more personal curve balls thrown our way.

March 14, 2015

This past week has been very exciting for me, as I have been traveling around Europe. I am currently writing this post from Paris. I am traveling with the MBA/MS students for the France Study Abroad Program. Before I left, I made sure to complete the work that I would have been doing this week. My group members were extremely understanding and I ensured them that I would catch up with anything that I missed during my time away. They have definitely been moving things along and have not let my absence stop our progress with the project. They have met with a friend of Drew's who used to work at Walgreen's to get his perspective and opinions about the channeling strategy that would be most effective for the product that we are marketing. They have also been working on setting up interviews with patients that use a similar device to the one that we are working on. I am feeling a little guilty for not being there this past week to work on the project, but I will definitely pull my own weight and hit the ground running when I return from my trip. Life gets in the way sometimes, and you have to learn how to work as a team to get past the obstacles. This is one thing that I think will only make the team stronger and will allow us all to have a better appreciation for one another, at least for me. I am excited, yet a little nervous for when I come back for all the work that needs to be done to complete the project. We have already done so much, but have so much more left to do. In addition to other classes that I need to catch up with, this next month and a half is going to be extremely busy for me. Graduation is right around the corner, and this is enough motivation for me to step it up and crank out the work that I need to do to complete the semester!